Maybe the Maple Leafs Don’t Need All Big Defencemen

A funny little (no pun intended) theme is developing around the Toronto Maple Leafs this week. It’s about how they might be collecting small defencemen. That sounds almost like a joke, given how Toronto has been building its blue line. This is supposed to be a bigger, tougher, more playoff-ready hockey team. And yet here comes Vinny Borgesi, all 5-foot-8 of him, making people stop and watch.

Borgesi is skilled but small. Is he too small?

With a player like Borgesi, the temptation is to start with the measurement. Five-foot-eight. That’s the number that jumps off the page. It’s also the number that probably caused a few NHL teams to move on from him. But after watching him at the Prospects Challenge, the more interesting question becomes: What if he can really play?

That's not a new question in hockey. Lane Hutson has already given the league a pretty good answer. Hutson has already given the league a pretty good answer. Hutson isn't Borgesi, of course, and there is no reason to put that kind of expectation on Borgesi, a 22-year-old who has played just seven AHL games. But Hutson has helped demonstrate something that hockey has been learning, slowly and sometimes reluctantly: size can be a limitation without being a definition.

Undoubtedly, smaller blueliners come with limitations.

Borgesi certainly has limitations. At 5-foot-8, there will be nights when the physical side of professional hockey becomes a problem. The NHL is a different challenge. The AHL isn't the NHL either. Eventually, if Borgesi gets that far, he will have to deal with bigger, stronger forwards trying to put him through the glass.

But Borgesi can control a few things. He can skate. He can move laterally. He keeps his feet moving. He sees passing lanes. He gets the puck moving. He is aggressive at the offensive blue line. He appears comfortable making plays under pressure. And, perhaps most importantly, he seems to have that little bit of offensive imagination that makes a defenceman interesting.

That was what stood out this week. Borgesi wasn't merely surviving. He was creating. He was arguably one of Toronto's best players through two games, and Nick Richard called him the clear standout after the Maple Leafs' overtime loss to Winnipeg. Steven Ellis had also noticed him at practice, listing Borgesi among the Maple Leafs prospects who looked good.

Does looking good mean Borgesi will get a Maple Leafs roster spot - even someday?

None of that means Borgesi will play 70 NHL games someday. Hockey has many players who look terrific in September and never quite make the jump. But it does mean something. It means the Maple Leafs have a player worth watching. And maybe that's the larger lesson here. Toronto doesn't need to build a blue line where every defenceman looks like he was designed in a hockey laboratory: six-foot-three, 215 pounds, mean expression.

The team needs defencemen who can defend, move the puck and think the game. Size helps. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But if a player is good enough, the size question may become secondary.

That's where Borgesi has made this training camp interesting. He isn't asking anyone to ignore his size. He's simply giving them something else to talk about.